Who Killed Piet Barol?

by Richard Mason

  The Blessing is a particular bush that fruits only once in every hundred moons. There were five such bushes in the forest of Gwadana, and finding them was one of the first lessons of Nosakhe Zini. As a boy Ntsina had known their rhythms. Working in the mines had broken this bond. Now he sensed that a Blessing had fruited, because news of the Blessing’s fruiting travels swiftly in those parts.

  They were led by the spoor of the bushbuck.

  As Arthur emerged from the trees into the clearing where the Blessing grew, Ntsina placed a hand on his shoulder. Ahead was a huge bush, two hundred years old and as tall as a tree. Impalas and bushbuck stood at its base, plucking the sweet leaves and sweeter fruit. Above them, five bands of monkeys each had their own spot. The baboons were at the top, babies clinging to their mothers’ backs. Birds of all hues and none sat in the branches, singing and eating. Eyes downcast, Ntsina moved towards the tree. His movements were smooth and unruffled. Watching from above, the monkeys saw that this hairless ape understood the laws of the forest, and they did not attack as they would have done had Ntsina come brandishing a stick. The fruiting of a Blessing is an occasion for truce. Even the impalas, usually so skittish, restrained their impulse to flee.

  The fruits at Arthur’s level were the property of the antelope, but Ntsina reached for a branch still heavy with them. He gave one to Arthur, and watched the child’s face as he bit it. Arthur’s cheeks turned pink. Ntsina lowered the branch for him, and he stretched on tiptoes to take one for himself.

  From twenty trees away, the leopard who had stolen Piet Barol’s biltong heard the sounds of creatures feasting and felt sad. There were too many eyes on a Blessing to permit the clandestine attack that was his only hope. Birds and monkeys watched sharply, and the buck did not forget to twitch their noses for the scent of a predator. Good fortune had placed in the leopard’s way the carcass of a bushpig, one of the lucky beings in that forest to have died of natural causes. By the time he found him he was half consumed by maggots, but he had eaten him in any case, and digested a quantity of the maggots too; and now he had an uneasy sense that creatures were moving inside him. He lay down in the shade of a bush. He yearned for the company of a leopardess. He no longer thought so much of mounting, as of being nuzzled by one. It was a long time since any leopard had licked his ears, or the fur under his muzzle that his own tongue could not reach. He avoided catching sight of his reflection in the forest’s pools, because he had once been proud of his looks and knew that he had not groomed properly in too long.

  One other creature shared this glade with him: the young baboon tormented by dreams of greatness. This baboon was in an extremely bad mood. In the months since the Barols’ arrival, he had begun his campaign to dominate the other males in his troop—begun too early, because at ten years of age he was nowhere near the size and weight of the adult males. Self-confidence, bestowed on him by a doting mother and attentive older siblings, had inspired over-reaching. Now other males sensed the ambitions of an alpha on the make and united against him. Twice he had been thrown from the top of a tree. On one of these occasions he had broken his shoulder. His right hand now trailed weakly on the ground and made him burn with shame.

  His mother, and all his siblings, were at the Blessing; but there were limits to their protection. The most he could hope for was that one would save him a fruit—but he knew that a single taste of the fruit of the Blessing is worse than no taste at all, for the yearning it ignites is terrible. He sat in the tree, muttering to himself. When he saw the baby hairless ape pass by, he felt doubly ashamed that this baby should eat what he could not. His thoughts turned to the hairless apes. They had a special stick that made a bright sound. This stick, wielded by Piet, had killed two baboons, and the decree had gone out that the hairless apes were to be left undisturbed. The forest, after all, had more in it than any baboon could possibly eat.

  What it did not have were oranges.

  Sitting in the tree, so close to the fruit he could not have, the young warrior’s thoughts turned to this other fruit that had been denied him. He was wholly caught up in the unfairness of it all. Using his good arm, he swung down to the forest floor and walked away from the Blessing, following the path the hairless apes had used. He could smell their traces on branches Ntsina had moved, see their footprints on wet mud. As he went, his anger dimmed, replaced by fascination. There had been much private speculation among the baboons about the ways and habits of these strange apes, and about the special sticks they had. Their leader’s edict forbidding all contact had heightened their mystery.

  The baboon stopped out of sight of the hairless ape colony, disturbed by low sounds. He saw, to his surprise, that two pale brown hairless apes had left the camp and were kneeling by the stream, bowing their heads and murmuring to themselves. He tiptoed past them, to the last of the trees. The colony seemed deserted. No sound came from the shelters where the apes beat wood day in, day out. He saw the door through which he had glimpsed oranges many moons before. His heart pumped faster and despite himself he did a little dance, grinning with daring. There was a small patch of open ground between the last tree and the entrance to the wooden cave. He thought of his leader’s prohibition, but his leader was not here to enforce it.

  Adrenaline levels rising, the baboon left the trees and approached the wooden cave. The door was closed, but he had seen how the hairless apes opened it. He touched the knob of metal on the door. It was hot. He sprang away, but found his courage again. This time, using the hand that looked so like the hand of the hairless apes, he twisted it.

  It opened.

  The kitchen of a hairless ape is to a baboon a paradise of earthly delights. Contemplating its treasures, the intrepid explorer felt a surge of his true nature bubbling from within—the nature of a baboon destined to be an alpha, jealous rivals be damned. Those rivals, after all, were sitting in a tree with a single fruit, feeling proud to have kept him off it. When in fact they had done him a favour! Now he had all this! He could not contain himself. Before he sampled anything he began to dance, for caution was not his gift. He danced and waved his hands and found that the saucepans made a most delightful crash as they fell to the floor. So too the tin plates. There were nuts and dried papaya in glass tins, and syrups of many colours. He pawed uselessly at their lids, then found they smashed quite prettily. There were no oranges, but there was a jam made of them and he gorged himself on it, dazzled by his victory. The ingestion of so much sugar, as much as two hundred figs might bear, made him feel invincible. He opened the door of the cave and ventured forth, no longer afraid of the hairless apes with their noisy sticks.

  There stood a female hairless ape.

  The provision of a female to dominate was the crowning glory of this memorable day. He flung himself at Stacey, leaping and baring his fangs. He threw her to the ground and stamped on her, banging his feet on the earth, looking for rocks to throw. There weren’t any to hand, but he remembered the strange implements in the cave, and fetched a saucepan. He would have smashed her on the head with it, so great was his delirium, had Mohammed and Ierephaan, returning from afternoon prayer, not entered the camp at this minute and charged him. He put up a good display, showing his teeth and screeching, and during this Stacey got to her feet, dusty and bruised, and ran for the chest in which Piet kept his gun. It was locked. She shook the padlock uselessly, and rifled his drawers for the key. She watched Ierephaan chase the baboon into the jungle, and stood in the mean little hut in which her husband had left her, shaking with fear.

  And then anger.

  Piet and his Bantu workers were hauling a forest mahogany back to camp. He had left the Indians and Luvo to guard his wife, though he had not told them this was their duty. The Indians had gone to pray, Luvo had taken a book to a shady pool, with the result that Stacey had indeed been alone and defenceless. Piet returned to a barrage of hysterical recrimination. He was overcome by remorse and made no attempt to defend himself, but the inconveniences of camp life had built within Stacey f
or months. She wanted an adversary and was exasperated by Piet’s humility.

  Listening to the white woman shouting at the white man, Ierephaan, who had begun to miss his wife, was reminded that female company brings its own inconveniences. His wife had a terrific temper, which absence from one another had dimmed the memory of. “She’s a wild one, this infidel,” he said to Mohammed.

  “It’s this place that is wild. I cannot wait to leave it.” Mohammed went back to the workshop and continued the sanding of a magnificent console, made of forest mahogany with garlands of flowers in lime wood tumbling over its back and sides.

  Piet returned to work, chastened. He hoped Stacey’s mood would cool, and in another room, at another temperature, it might have done. Not in this room, on this blazing day. She washed. The monkey hadn’t hurt her, but he had frightened her terribly. When a mother is frightened, she thinks at once of her children, and now her anxiety transferred itself to Arthur—sent off into a forest by his father, in the company of a garden boy. What was to prevent Ntsina from kidnapping their child? Selling him to a childless couple in want of a beautiful son? With no one to answer her frantic questions, they assumed the quality of truths. She tried to read, but could not. She put her book down, drummed her fingers on the table. An enormous spider was watching her from the roof. She saw it and fetched a broom. Chasing the terrified creature relieved some of her anguish, as did the satisfying way its abdomen burst when the handle of her broom found it. She sat down again, anger and fear turning to acid within her. The sky turned scarlet. Dusk was coming. She began to pace, in a panic that Arthur would not return.

  At the Blessing, Ntsina saw that he and Arthur had lingered too late. They were queasy from all the fruit they had eaten, and their pace home was sluggish. Ntsina carried a collection of the fruits carefully in his lambskin pouch. He had decided to share them with the Bantu workers and perhaps, if they were polite, with the Indians; not with the adult Strange Ones. Arthur had discovered the call of the howler monkey, and his renditions were arrestingly good. Ntsina did his best to hurry him as the light faded, but the little boy had eaten a great deal, and gone a long distance, and in the end he hoisted him to his shoulders and jogged the rest of the way, so that they would not be in the forest at night.

  They arrived in the camp as the last of the light died, and were met by Stacey hurling abuse. Ntsina’s shoulders ached with the weight of Arthur. He did not understand all the words the Strange One used, but her tone made her meaning plain enough. She seized the boy from him and his heart contracted at Arthur’s despairing backward glance. He stood patiently, while the white woman screamed. He was aware that the workers were watching him. So was Piet, struck dumb by his wife. Ntsina knew that if he listened too well he might hit Stacey, and that hitting a white woman could not end well for a Bantu. Besides, he had never hit a woman yet. He would not let this witch provoke him.

  So he lowered his head and trained his eyes on a worm struggling across the dust. Luvo came up and put a hand on his shoulder.

  But fear had ruptured Stacey’s self-control. In full flight, she said: “I hate living in this wretched place. I hate it I hate it.” She could see it hurt her husband to have his foolish romantic dream shattered. In the city, it had given her pain to wound him. Now fear and discomfort and the accumulation of countless irritations made her impervious. “I hate this shack you make me live in. I hate not being able to wash my hair.” And then, spurred by Piet’s wide blue eyes and Ntsina’s smell after an hour’s run with Arthur: “I hate these stinking Kaffirs.”

  Ntsina recognized “Kaffir.” It lit the wick of his own anger, so long unexpressed. Without a word he went into his hide and took a clean shirt. He went off in the direction of the river, her shouts following him, and washed. He had decided to break a solemn vow, and wanted to look his best for it.

  In the camp, Stacey said: “I don’t want that gun locked up. What use is it if I can’t get to it?”

  —

  NTSINA SLIPPED THROUGH the trees, sleek as a panther, following the stream. It is dangerous to be in a forest at night, but the full moon showed him his way in the water. He was too angry to be afraid of wild creatures. He knew, in his heart, that he would have to go back to Piet. He could not be seen in Gwadana. They would throw him from the cliffs, if they knew he had helped a Strange One kill an Ancestor Tree. Nevertheless…His turbulent thoughts carried him all the way to the place where the stream widens into the lagoon. He stopped, thinking of the countless times he had trodden this watery path.

  Ahead was the village. On moonlit nights in his youth, his friends had sneaked to the edges of their homesteads, young men had courted young women. They had met and smoked and talked. Tonight, though the air was fair, no one was abroad. Every gate was tightly locked.

  Ntsina knew it was Piet’s lie that kept his people indoors on this gorgeous night. He thought of his father and his rage found a target. It pulled him from the shelter of the trees. He passed a homestead and heard its occupants snoring. The dogs began barking. He started to run, his feet sure on the path he knew so well. He had no clear idea what he would do when he reached his home, but he felt he must see the people he loved or he would never sleep again.

  The Zini compound had always been tidy, but there was a new perfection in its order. The fence was as straight as the horizon, the lawn beyond immaculate. The sweet smoke of mphepho was coming from the kitchen hut.

  Inside, Nosakhe was in a deep trance—one so deep she had tumbled over the cliff of consciousness into sleep, where her dreams were vague and troubled. Ntsina crept to the window. To have told his beloved grandmother he had died! It was an abomination. He had with him ten fruits of the Blessing. He put five of them on the window ledge, and crept on. Ata smelt him and thumped her tail. She did not bark. No sound save the crashing of the waves disturbed the silence.

  The tapping of a finger at the door of her hut drove Bela bolt awake. She had driven a hook into the mud wall, and tied the door handle with a rope made of goat hair. It was the best lock she could devise, but it would be no match for a man of Sukude’s strength. She sat up from her grass mat, and lit a lamp. She could not bear to be forced in the dark. She heard the tap again. She had many times thought of bringing a knife, but the idea of blood and retribution had stopped her. Better to turn it on herself. She thought of the great effort she had put into her life—of what sweetness and modesty had cost her. How envied she had been, and yet it had all come to this: alone, on a dark night, with a wicked man at her door.

  Ntsina saw the light. Softly, he said: “It is I.”

  The lantern moved.

  “Who is there?” called Bela, and there was wonder as well as terror in her voice.

  “It is I, your husband.”

  Bela took the rope off its hook and shut her eyes tight in prayer. She had never prayed so fervently. Then she summoned all her courage and opened the door.

  Ntsina stood there, as tangible as if he were alive. She drew back from him. Nosakhe had told her of the failure of her spell of Reincarnation and the sadder news that it could not be repeated. With it had died her final hope. Yet here he was.

  “Ntsina?”

  “It is I, beloved one.”

  She began to cry. She could not move. He slipped past her, into the room, and closed the door behind him. Bela put her hand out and touched Ntsina’s chest. It was solid and warm.

  “Praise be. The spell worked,” she said.

  “Which spell?”

  “Your grandmother went into the Sea to fetch you from the gate to the Underworld.”

  “Is she unharmed?”

  “By the grace of her Ancestors. And yours.”

  He put his hands on her shoulders, but she stepped away. “Where have you been?”

  The moment of truth had come, and Ntsina found that he was not equal to it. Nor could he lie. “I have seen many dark things,” he said.

  “Will you stay in this world?”

  “No. But I will come
back. I will visit you and protect you, and one day when I have all we need for a good life I will come for you. I promise you. And then I will be with you forever.”

  Relief so powerful it made her giddy rose through her. He went to her, and this time she did not resist. He embraced her gently. He took one of the fruits of the Blessing and bit it, and kissed her. The sweetness of the Blessing’s juice twisted round their tongues as they found each other. The suffering and anguish and abstinence of half a year lifted from them, returned them to that moment, months before, when they had stood in this very hut while their friends feasted outside.

  Time accelerated. It sped by in a delirious confusion of hands and lips and tongues. Bela smelled salty, of the seawater she used for bathing. Beneath its taste was something sweeter, a scent uniquely her own. It grew stronger as their bodies collided. The stars began to retreat, and Bela, who knew that daylight changes everything, pushed Ntsina on his back. She chose the angle of his entry and his speed, instinctive forces inspiring her. Only the rays of the rising sun striking the hut’s walls brought Ntsina to his senses, and still he could not bear to stop. It took a superhuman effort to pull away from her.

  “Come with me.”

  They emerged from the hut, disheveled and joyful. Ntsina led them to his father’s hut. “Knock, sweet one, and make him admit you.”

  Bela knocked, and they heard Sukude get to his feet, the scrape of his key in his lock. When he opened the door, only Bela was visible. “I have come to clean,” she said.

  Sukude drew back. She knelt to sweep the coals from the fire, and he watched her. He had woken with an erection. Under its influence the vow he had made to Zandi lost its force, as did Piet Barol’s warnings of the creature. There are men in whom sexual desire can blunt all protestations of conscience, and Sukude Zini was one of them. He looked at Bela’s blanket, which swung tantalizingly. He could see the outlines of a bottom he had long lusted over. The death of Fezile the witch doctor had shaken him to his core, but the weeks that had passed since, with no spirit visitations, had begun to leave him feeling grateful rather than otherwise: one of the two men who knew his secrets was now dead. He stood up and took the key and went to the door. He was about to lock it when it opened.